Nearly five years after a campaign by Eco-Conscious Citizens, with the support of nearly 4.000 petitioners, stopped the construction of an office complex on Parks and Gardens land in Accra, the environmental group is now supporting the fight to stop a private estate developer from moving unto Parks and Gardens’s Accra HQ.
Yesterday, representatives of Danny Ike Estate Developers Ltd, owned by someone named Rev Dr Ezekiel, who claim to have been sold this state land, stopped Parks and Gardens staff from getting the developer’s containers off their property.
Eco-Conscious Citizens urges all trespassers, including developers and any Government associated persons or institutions, to take their hands off Parks and Gardens lands in Accra and the rest of Ghana.
Ghana’s first President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah understood the importance of green spaces and set up the Ministry of Parks and Gardens in 1965, which was headed by Cabinet Minister Nee Ocansey. Subsequently, lands were acquired by the Government across Ghana for beatification and conservation.
A developer is currently trying to encroach on Parks and Gardens lands at the headquarters in Cantonments, near the Russian Embassy. Two containers were placed on the said land destroying trees brought from the National Cathedral site.
Attempts by Parks and Gardens staff to remove the containers were met with resistance from the trespassers.
There is encroachment of Parks and Gardens land in most of the regions. In Wa in the Upper West Region, a petrol station is being built on Parks and Gardens land.
Ghana must preserve its green spaces and cannot continue making a mockery of the Green Ghana Initiative and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Climate change is real, and building on our green spaces and destroying our forest reserves is inimical to our survival and well-being.
Eco-Conscious Citizens is calling on the media, all conscious citizens in and outside Ghana, its supporters, including those who signed the 2019 petition to the President, to expose and resist this latest move to diminish the land of the headquarters.
The only acceptable development on Parks and Gardens lands is that focused on green initiatives.
